Energetica India Magazine

Capacity has always been the visible part of the story. Policy certainty, compliance, and quality are the less visible, less celebrated foundations on which that capacity actually stands. Getting them right is not the next phase of India’s solar growth story; it is the condition on which the story reaches the destination we’re all working towards. For much of the last decade, India’s so- lar narrative has been told in GWs. Ev- ery new tender, every capacity auction, every milestone crossed on the way to the country’s renewable energy targets has been a scale story: how much can be built, how fast, and at what price. As India looks toward its 500 GW non-fossil capacity target, the more consequential question is no longer how much solar the country can install, but whether the eco- system behind that solar, the manufac- turing base, the quality standards, the compliance architecture, can be trusted to perform for the next 30 years. This is a quieter shift, but arguably a more important one. India has moved from being a market that imports mod- ules to one that is trying to become a globally competitive manufacturing ecosystem. That transition is being engi- neered through two specific instruments: the Approved List of Models and Man- ufacturers (ALMM), which mandates eligible projects to source modules from listed domestic manufacturers, and the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, which offers financial incen - tives tied to actual production of solar cells and modules within the country. Together, these policies have given do- mestic manufacturing a real foothold in a market that for years was dominated by imports. The Progress is Real It would be unfair to understate what has been achieved. Domestic module manufacturing capacity has expanded significantly over the past few years, and a growing share of utility-scale projects now use India-made modules by de- fault, simply because ALMM requires it for many segments of the market. Cell manufacturing, being the weaker link in the domestic value chain for a long time, is now beginning to scale as PLI- linked capacity comes online. With the recent implementation of ALMM-II, investment that might once have gone toward import-dependent project devel- opment is increasingly flowing into cell, ingot and wafer manufacturing facilities, and backward integration. Driving this backward integration even deeper and reducing import dependence, Navitas Solar recently committed an INR 1500 crore investment for a multi-phase 3.6 GW cell manufacturing facility with a pilot wafer and ingot line. Where Does the Real Test Lie? This is where the conversation needs to move beyond capacity addition. Three factors, working together, will determine whether India’s manufacturing ambi- tions translate into a durable industry or turn into a policy-dependent bubble. The first is policy stability. Manufactur - ing decisions are long-horizon decisions. A module or cell facility is typically underwritten against a demand and in- centive outlook stretching well beyond a single budget cycle or policy review. Frequent changes to ALMM eligibility criteria, PLI disbursement timelines, or import duty structures might create ex- actly the kind of uncertainty that makes lenders and investors hesitate. The term Stability is not to be miscon- strued to mean policies can never be re- fined, but more from the perspective that changes should be predictable, phased, and communicated well in advance, so Beyond Capacity: Why Compliance and Policy Stability Will Define India’s Solar Future POLICY MATTERS 56 energetica INDIA- Jul-Aug_2026 Vineet Mittal Director Navitas Solar